Things have gotten really crazy for me lately and some of you may be wondering where I’ve been. Like many of you, as the year progresses, new clients come on, old clients come back and all of a sudden we’re overwhelmed. What happens is we start having trouble staying the course with marketing. 

Since we need to remain visible to our prospects, we have to make sure our marketing doesn’t losing steam. Here are some tips to regroup and get you back on track:

• Concentrate on one marketing tactic at a time rather than bounce from idea to idea. Don’t be tempted to constantly follow the “marketing idea of the day” and ignore a program that is working. Keep evaluating how each tactic is performing, improve it if need be and use it consistently. With your limited marketing resources, stay focused on the plan until you get a result – whether good or bad.
• Schedule a marketing appointment with yourself each day. Whether it is going to a networking event, writing a press release, developing your newsletter or writing a blog post, make time in your calendar to work on your marketing.
• Don’t get overwhelmed with all that you should be doing. Break your marketing into small, doable pieces and take it one step at a time. For example, rather than execute a large direct marketing campaign, break it into pieces and send out several smaller mailings so you have time to follow up. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have time to do it all. Be selective and work on those activities that work for your business.
• Spend some time assessing how your marketing activities are working. How many new clients have you gotten from your activities? Are people finding your web site or blog? Look at the stats on what keywords people are using to find you and make note. If you don’t have the capacity to do this yourself, make sure the people you have hired can provide you this information. Marketing takes time, but you can track your progress if you have the right tools.

Don’t let marketing fade away as the year progresses. Create a one page marketing activity summary and keep it visible. If things have changed and you adjusted your activities, update the summary to keep you moving ahead. Remember, your marketing plan is a living document and adjustments will happen throughout the year. That is not failure. Ignoring marketing is.

©2010 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Marketing Execution – Plan, Execute, Track, Measure
2. Marketing Activities – What Worked?
3. Marketing Action Plan

The way to gain visibility for your blog is to make it an ongoing marketing project.  Do all the marketing basics that you would do for any activity:

• Pick your target audience
• Understand what they need and how you fulfill that need
• Speak to them in terms they understand
• Provide useful, relevant information

Just as with all marketing, it takes time for you to build momentum and get the recognition that you want. Remember the three phases of relationship marketing: VCP model (visibility + credibility = profitability – defined in your terms of success) and apply that model to your online and social media marketing effort. Your blog is the medium to use to develop relationships with your audience, letting them get to know you, your expertise and your passion. It’s your “home base” for developing a strong personal branding and you need to put in a quality effort so that people can form their opinion of you based on what they see on the blog.

Post regularly (at least 2-3 times a week) with relevant content. Create a plan to get you on track and make a list of topics that you can write about if you find yourself with writer’s block. Just as I did here, use the questions on LinkedIn as food for thought. It’s always easier to write when you have a question posed to you. It’s the conversation starter!

Once you get the blog going and get beyond that first couple of posts, here are things you can do to make your blog more visible and stand out from others.

• Comment frequently on other blogs and add value to the community so you get noticed.
• Submit your blog to Blogged.com and use the rating to evaluate how you are doing against other blogs in your space.
• Create a community on MyBlogLog, add the widget to your site.
• Make sure you adhere to good SEO practices on the blog – if you use WordPress, install the All In One SEO Pack plugin
• Include video and images as well as text content. If you don’t create your own videos, link to others that are relevant.
• Include a link to your blog in every profile you create and in your email signature and make sure your blog is fed to all of your profiles in social networks.
• Notify your Twitter followers of a new post via the Twitter Updater plugin to WordPress
• Design your blog to appeal to your target audience, embracing your personal brand identity.

But on top of it all, keep at it with consistency. When you think you are only talking to yourself, all of a sudden your MyBlogLog starts filling up with little images, people visit and comment on your site and you start to feel like you truly belong to a community.

Please add your comments on your favorite activities for gaining visibility for your blog. I’ll take them all and create a checklist for folks to use.

©2010 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Full Posts or Excerpts?
2. Social Media Marketing – Myths or Reality?